Holiday Season Part 4: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is always such a highly anticipated day, almost as exciting as Christmas itself! For us, it means family, traditions, and togetherness. As soon as the kids eat the last chocolate out of the Christmas Countdown "thingy," excitement instantly kicks in! We always go to El Paso for our annual Christmas Eve family dinner and gift exchange, which was our plan for this year as well. We started packing, wrapping the last of the gifts, and loading up the cars first thing in the morning, and about 5 suitcases, 8 duffel bags, and 10 hours later, Sam got called into work! He promised it wouldn't be for long, so we waited for him at home. Felt like we were all dressed up and nowhere to go. It put a slight kink in our plans, but in the end, we still got to be together with family, which is the most important part!

Cousins playing together.
And a brand new cousin Landon getting his rest in so that soon enough he will be keeping up wiht the other three!

My two little Christmas cuties! It's not often that I dress them the same, but for some reason, Christmas is always an exception!

Jaden, Elijah, and Aubrey were so excited to get to open their first Christmas gifts. Jaden got a remote control moster truck and two very cool Nuts and Bolts Storybooks from his cousin Scarlet. These gifts were a combination of all of his favorite things - trucks, reading, and building! Thank you Scarlet!
Elijah was so excited to tear the wrapping paper off of his gifts! He got a Fix and Learn Speedy and a Fridge Wash n' Go from cousin Landon!
This year we decided to start a new Christmas Eve tradition for the boys. Once we got settled in at Nana and Papa's house and got all set up for Santa - cookies and milk ready to go - we let the boys each open two presents. One was a pair of matching Christmas jammies (see, there's that Christmas matching thing again!), and the other was a Christmas book and coordination stuffed animal. Jaden got "Llama, Llama Holiday Drama" with a little Llama stuffed animal, and Elijah got "Duck and Goose: It's Time for Christmas" with a duck and goose finger puppet. They were so excited to get their new jammies on and just sit and read together!

And while daddy stayed upstairs with Jaden to make sure he stayed nestled, all snug in his bed (while daddy was probably the one with visions of sugarplums dancing in his head), Santa was in for a long, busy night ahead of her!